


Spectre: 76

by Suspicious_Popsicle



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Roleswap, Spectre: 76, Strike Commander Reyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 05:06:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10824375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Suspicious_Popsicle/pseuds/Suspicious_Popsicle
Summary: If it weren't for Angela, Jack would be six feet under, rotting in a casket somewhere in Indiana. Instead, she'd brought him back. She'd been experimenting with nanotechnology, and Jack, by force of necessity, had become human test subject number one.Angela's nanites hadn't known quite what to make of him, but they'd madesomething.





	Spectre: 76

**Author's Note:**

> I really, _really_ like balance and contrast and I just wanted a horrifyingly pallid spectre!Jack with bright fuck-off blue monster eyes and a body of cracked ice and cigarette smoke to contrast with Reaper's glowing coals and urban grunge, tarnished metal and void aesthetic. But putting both of those together in the same fic sounds too much like work. So here's some quick roleswap porn instead.
> 
> There's some more R76 junk (mostly fluff and nonsense) in my sideblog [allofthisnonsenseplease](http://allofthisnonsenseplease.tumblr.com/), if you're interested. It's tagged cornfuck and the reaper.

Gabriel stood at the window of his office, staring at the statue cluttering up the grounds of his organization and trying to keep his mind on the present. The statue was three times the height of a person, and meant to be an everyman, a stand-in for all the soldiers in Overwatch. The damned thing looked suspiciously like Jack, though, and Gabriel wondered just who had thought it would be a good idea to create a giant statue bearing the likeness of the leader of a covert ops team. Then again, maybe they hadn't even considered that. Maybe the artist had simply picked through old archives for what little news footage and photos were available from the front lines of the Omnic Crisis. Be hard not to want to capture Jack as he had been back then—all confidence and focused ferocity, looking like an avenging angel descended to save mankind. He still looked like an angel, sometimes, just not the type that most artists liked to depict.

The past had wormed its way into his thoughts. Not surprising, since the ramifications of the bombing in Zurich were still making themselves felt. He glanced back over his shoulder at the video screen open on his desk. It was frozen on an image of Jack running through a training simulation, teeth bared in a death's head snarl, eyes glowing ice blue around their pinpoint pupils, the substance of his body breaking up to flare out behind him like misty wings....

Two seconds further into the recording and three extra eyes would open, splitting the ghostly pale flesh of his forehead and cheek to swivel wildly in search of targets.

The type of angel that had needed to use 'Fear not' as the standard, friendly greeting.

Staring at him, Gabriel subconsciously reached to touch his own face. His scars were all far older than the two slashes that disrupted the normal symmetry of Jack's features. The blast two years ago hadn't caught Gabriel, after all. While Jack had been leading a picked team against the terrorists that had infiltrated Overwatch, Gabriel had been getting the assembled diplomats and politicians to safety. The whole situation could have ended a lot worse if they hadn't had warning. Funny thing about someone like Jack leading Blackwatch: having that innate ability to bring out the best in others had saved lives. One of the infiltrators had defected, spilled the whole plot to Jack with just enough time to manage a quiet evac and stage an assault against the agents occupying the building. If Jack hadn't been head of Blackwatch, if he'd accepted the position of Strike Commander when it had been offered to him instead of turning it down in Gabriel's favor...well. The possibility didn't bear thinking about.

Bad enough that Overwatch's ranks had been infiltrated and corrupted to such a degree. That was being handled, the rot pulled out and now—Gabriel hoped—mostly eradicated.

Bad enough what had happened to Jack.

Gabriel still woke shouting from nightmares of his brief glimpse of Jack after they'd pulled him from the rubble. He remembered Jack's hand, white as cracked ice, hanging limply off the stretcher. The golden engagement band gleamed accusingly on his finger, a promise never fulfilled. He remembered Jack's face, a misshapen mask of blood, and his eyes—oh, God, his eyes!—left open though they were still and sightless. In his nightmares, he couldn't reach Jack's side. The swarm of medics carried him off before Gabriel could grab his hand, feel the fading warmth of his body. Sometimes in his nightmares, Jack sat up and _screamed_ , and the world exploded in a blizzard of ash.

Jack had died that day. Gabriel had seen death, touched it, far too many times to mistake it despite the denial screaming in his head. Jack had _died_ , and the realization had hurt so bad that Gabriel hadn't fully understood why his own heart kept beating.

If it weren't for Angela, Jack would be six feet under, rotting in a casket somewhere in Indiana. Instead, she'd brought him back. She'd been experimenting with nanotechnology, and Jack, by force of necessity, had become human test subject number one.

Angela's nanites hadn't known quite what to make of him, but they'd made _something_.

Two years later, they were still discovering new aspects of Jack's singular existence, some good, some not so good. There were days when Jack's soldier's stoicism and Gabriel's memories of the pain of losing him were all that kept them from breaking down and calling it a curse. Fact was, though, Jack was alive, and there were days enough when that was plenty for them to be thankful for.

Gabriel had just turned back to the window when a percussive shudder rolled through the building. It had felt for all the world like a tremor, a minor earthquake not strong enough to do any damage. There had been something else, though, a sound almost below the threshold of hearing that had sounded disturbingly like an explosion.

Although he might not see as much action in the field as he used to, his shotguns were never out of reach. Gabriel had one in hand and one holstered as he called up security feeds from across the base.

“Athena, what the hell was that?”

“Controlled explosion in the training simulator. I believe Commander Morrison lost his temper.”

He rubbed a hand over his face, holstering his shotgun. The phone and com lines were lighting up as others tried to figure out what had happened.

“Let everyone know it was a false alarm, and get a maintenance team down there if he's broken anything important.” Two of the video feeds were nothing but static. The rest were little better—just swirls of dust and darkness. “Jesus, Jack. You couldn't find something better to do with your afternoon? Had to go back and destroy the training room?”

“Pardon the correction, Strike Commander, but Commander Morrison did not _return_ to the training room, as he had not yet left.”

“He _what_?” Gabriel's attention jumped to the still-paused feed from earlier. The timestamp put the recording at shortly past six in the morning. “It's almost four! What the hell has he been doing in there?”

“Commander Morrison has made use of nearly every simulated combat situation available. He has ignored repeated prompts to exit the training room in order to rest and eat.”

“That's our Jack,” Gabriel muttered. “What set him off? Can you pull up the feed from the sim he was just running?”

“Certainly, Strike Commander.”

A new window appeared on the desk, showing Jack already looking haggard as the emptiness of the training room suddenly filled with hard light constructs of walls and doors, behind which lurked enemy combatants. He raced through the halls, half-dissolved into a cloud of mist, unnatural eyes blazing blue on every patch of exposed skin, his movements betraying a growing desperation and fury. Athena continued on as Gabriel watched.

“Despite being informed that this particular simulation is intended for a small team of participants, he attempted it on his own at the highest difficulty setting. He did very well. Eighty percent of the enemies were eliminated, and sixty percent of the bombs were located and deactivated before the time limit was reached.”

“I don't remember this sim,” Gabriel breathed, eyes glued to Jack as his pallid skin lost cohesion, began glitching and dissolving away into misty clouds of nanites. Jack's pulse was electric blue impulses streaking through his veins. His fingers were gnarled, clawed things clamped around his pulse rifle. His breath came out in white puffs that wreathed his head, and his jaw opened far too wide as he shouted.

He must have reached the time limit. Gabriel's heart seized as he saw a violent flash of orange and yellow flame as part of the building exploded in front of Jack. He slammed his hands down to either side of the screen, momentarily forgetting that he was only watching a recorded simulation. In the video, Jack threw his head back, screaming in rage and defiance, and the self-control holding him together abruptly shattered, blowing him apart into his component nanites. The feed shivered and froze. Jack was nothing but visual snow.

“It is the newest simulation in the database,” Athena calmly informed him, “modeled after the attack in Zurich.”

“No fucking wonder he blew up! Don't let him run this sim again unless I tell you different, got it?”

“Understood, Strike Commander.”

“He still down there?” he demanded, on his way out the door.

“No, sir. He has just reached your quarters.”

That far already? Gabriel kept forgetting how fast Jack could move now, how sometimes he didn't even seem to need to cross a physical distance to get from one place to another. Still, it was a relief. His heart was racing too fast as he strode down the hall. Even knowing that Jack ought to be able to pull himself back together, he still needed to see him, touch him, reassure himself that Jack was all right. It had been almost a year since he had seen him go so violently to pieces, and Gabriel wasn't optimistic enough to think that being dumped back into the firefight that had killed him was something Jack could simply shrug off.

His com crackled to life even as he reached for it.

“Gabe. I need you.” Jack's voice had always been rough, but the explosion and his subsequent resurrection had only worsened it. There wasn't anything in the world Gabriel would rather have heard just then.

“Already on my way, Jackie.”

It wasn't the first time he had heard that tone in Jack's voice, so Gabriel knew more or less what to expect when he made it to his quarters. He walked right through into the bathroom, and sure enough, there was Jack in the shower, using the smallest available enclosed space to try to help hold himself together with limited success.

The tub itself was filled with a roiling cloud of nanites that constantly spilled over the side, as if he was standing in a bucket of dry ice. Flickers of movement in the clouds called for Gabriel's attention, quick suggestions of something solid but amorphous, inhuman. Jack's body flickered, naked abdomen halfway gone into the agitated swarm below. He could normally take his clothes along with him when he disassembled, but that only worked if he was in a stable enough frame of mind to break them down as well. That was obviously not the case this time. His chest was bare, mottled white and gray, alive with blue, staring eyes that tracked Gabriel's movements. His arms were almost solid at the shoulders, but wisps of nanites bled off them lower down, and his fingers dripped like melting icicles. Blue sparks fizzed along his veins like lightning strikes. His face was as close to normal as he'd been able to manage: weathered as an icy winter crag, bisected by a diagonal scar running cheek to forehead, and marred by another that slashed across his lips. He looked emaciated, nearly mummified, and the permanent sunken shadows around his eyes had darkened to the look of bruises. His blind eyes were too blue, the only color left to him, and always faintly luminescent.

“You overdid it,” Gabe said by way of greeting. He tempered his words by reaching out to cup Jack's cheek.

With a sigh, Jack leaned into the contact. A third eye split open his forehead beneath the end of the scar, and two more peeked out of his cheek.

“I need to know how much I'm capable of.” He frowned, and the eyes on his face reluctantly closed. A large one opened up on his chest as if to replace them.

“So you blew up the training room?”

“Accident.”

His eyes—his real eyes—remained closed as he reached up and wrapped his trembling hands around Gabriel's arm. The contact helped ground him as he forced his will upon the nanites, closing the staring eyes one by one so that they were nothing more than scars, solidifying his arms and reshaping the bone claws of his hands into blunt-tipped human fingers, forming stomach and sides, hips, pelvis, thighs, calves out of the swirl of nanites.

He was breathing hard by that point, sweating and gritting his teeth against whimpers of pain. The nanites required sustenance to run, same as living things, and Jack had pushed them for too long without recharging. They were feeding off of _him_ now, and at this stage it was too late for Jack to simply binge on sugar and protein bars to get the quick energy the nanites needed. They were going to take it, and if they drained him dry and wound up deactivating in the process, then so be it.

The only alternative was to take the energy they needed from someone else.

“It's all right, Jackie.” Gabriel leaned in to press their foreheads together and whisper the words. “Just breathe. I've got you.”

He stretched to kiss Jack's forehead, peeking from beneath his lashes to see another of those eyes open up to watch. Ignoring it, he stepped into the tub to stand closer as he stroked Jack's frost white hair and peppered his face with kisses. Jack's skin buzzed faintly beneath his lips, a testament to how unstable he was. His temperature was low, and Gabriel shivered as he felt some of his own warmth transfer to Jack.

Heat, energy, life, the soul—whatever it was, Jack was able to feed off of _something_ from other people in order to keep his nanites going. He'd discovered the ability by accident, when one of the surviving spies within Blackwatch had tried to kill him shortly after he had managed to stabilize his body for longer than a few hours at a time. Jack only remembered the incident in bits and pieces, but Gabriel, who had seen the security footage, was pretty damn sure that Jack had sucked the man's soul out of his mouth and devoured it. Until he'd seen that, Gabriel hadn't even been certain that he _believed_ in souls—not in a concrete sort of way, at least. He didn't have any better explanations, however, and when Jack suddenly had memories that weren't his and was able to identify several more sleeper agents within Overwatch, it seemed undeniable that he had consumed some vital and personal core of that bastard's existence.

Most of the discoveries about Jack's peculiar state of being had been made by accident. In time, Jack and Gabriel had, almost naturally, stumbled across a safer way to give him a similar boost.

_La petite mort_ , was a particularly apt French expression. The little death.

“Gabe....”

Jack's voice was a needy rumble. It buzzed against Gabriel's tongue as he sucked at a spot on Jack's throat just beneath his chin. Jack's hands slipped around his back, kneading his muscles, nails digging in, growing points.

“Claws, Jack.”

With a grunt of effort, Jack flattened his palms against Gabriel's back. When he moved them again in small, slow circles, his nails had returned to normal. Gabriel nuzzled his throat in appreciation and kissed a line down to his collarbone. He nipped carefully at the skin there, eliciting a pleased groan from Jack.

They had rules that Jack needed to follow when he got like this.

One: no biting or clawing. The scent of blood did strange things to him when his nanites were rebelling.

Two: no kisses on the mouth. Trust was all well and good, but there was no reason to tempt fate.

Three: Jack needed to be in control of his shape before Gabriel's clothes could come off.

Rule three could be tricky.

Gabriel lavished attention on Jack's neck and shoulders, dappling him with love bites that bloomed and faded in mere minutes. He ran his hands down Jack's back, holding him close, tracing the dip of his spine, the contours of muscle, reading the stories written in old scars. The eyes tracked the progress of his touches. He could feel them blinking closed beneath his fingertips. Distracted by kisses and wandering touches, Jack was having trouble sealing them away. Those eyes had been disturbing at first, but Jack was still _his_ Jack, still talked like him, thought like him, loved like him, and Gabriel had found that he didn't mind so much anymore.

Letting his hands wander lower, Gabriel stroked down past the small of Jack's back, reaching to cup the shallow curve of his ass. He dug his fingers in, massaging, teasingly spreading his cheeks. He inched his fingers down further still, moving inwards to dip between his thighs and pinch the sensitive skin there. Jack's right leg was solid, but his left dissipated into a swirl of mist less than a handspan below the top of his thigh. Gabriel paused in his kisses, face pleasantly nestled between Jack's pectorals.

“Not going to have a leg to stand on,” he warned.

He didn't wait for Jack to catch on, just hefted him up and pressed him back against the wall. Kissing and nipping across the broad expanse of Jack's chest, he kneaded the flesh of his thighs, gratified to feel the left gaining substance beneath his fingers.

“That's it, Jackie. You're doing good.”

Rolling his hips, he ground against Jack, tongue pressed flat to his chest to catch the vibration of his moan. Again and again, he rocked forward, building up a languorous rhythm, feeling Jack grow hard against him.

“Do you want me, Jackie?” He murmured the words against Jack's skin, feeling the miracle of his speeding heartbeat beneath his lips.

“Yes...!” Jack groaned the word, tightening his embrace around Gabriel's shoulders, squeezing his thighs around Gabriel's hips.

“Do you need me?” Jack's nipple was pert against his lips, and Gabriel swirled his tongue around it, grinning when Jack twisted his fingers into the thick material of his coat.

“ _Yesss_....”

This time, his answer came out as a hiss, a double-edged sword of desire and practicality. He ducked his head to lick the curve of Gabriel's ear, lips closing around the lobe, the barest hint of teeth testing the limits of his restraint and sending a shudder coursing through Gabriel's body. His hips jerked up sharply, and Jack moaned at the friction. The eyes flared up, opening and closing in a wave over his skin. They stayed shut afterward, giving Gabriel hope that Jack had regained control over his body. He was still losing wisps of nanites like the blue smoke of cigarettes from the corners of his mouth, but he felt solid in Gabriel's arms, and warmer than he had only a few minutes ago. Encouraged, Gabriel locked his mouth over Jack's nipple, worrying at it with teeth and tongue until he had Jack growling pleas at him, head thrown back against the wall as he bucked with every thrust of Gabriel's hips.

“Gabe, just—! I need... _Please_...!”

“Mm.... What do you need, Jackie?”

He trailed barely-there kisses over Jack's skin, and smiled to feel the muscles of Jack's stomach quiver and clench against him. He broke up the quick, hard thrusts with smooth rolls of his hips. Jack's cock was straining between their bodies, tip glistening with precum.

“If you could just fuck me, that would be great!” Jack rode the rise and fall of Gabriel's thrusts with a moan of pleasure dancing on the edge of pain. His head knocked back against the shower wall before he leaned forward and pressed his cheek to Gabriel's hair. “Want you so bad.... It _hurts_.”

Gabriel wasn't sure if that last had been a plea for help or not. Freshly reminded that it was painful for Jack to maintain his body when he had expended too much energy, he let Jack down and started to turn to reach for the lube he kept in the shower for precisely this reason.

Jack was quicker. He crowded Gabriel against the back wall, forcing his head back to kiss the underside of his chin, his neck and throat. He yanked at Gabriel's collar, and there was a tearing sound as the claws came out and he ripped it open.

“Hey! Maybe you can get away with wearing that ugly-ass jacket, but they actually expect me to dress nice!”

The sound of Jack's chuckle, deep and rough and edged with hunger, went straight to Gabriel's cock. So did his hand a moment later, sans the claws. He cupped Gabriel through the fabric of his pants, stroking with the very tips of his fingers.

“Sorry for the rush, _Commander_ Reyes. Allow me to make it up to you?”

He didn't wait for a response, just dropped to his knees. He had Gabriel's belt open and his pants and boxers down in seconds, and his eager touch set off shivers of pleasure. He stroked once, twice, and then his tongue was against Gabriel's head, a teasing point of pressure before his lips parted, stretching to take him in.

It was Gabriel's turn to moan, to grind the back of his skull against the wall as heat pooled low in his stomach and sparked heady cravings for more. He grasped at Jack's hair, feeling the short, fine strands slip maddeningly through his fingers. Jack worked at his cock, coaxing moans from him, stirring him up and then pulling back to leave him wanting. He was being far too much of a tease for someone who had been demanding to be fucked only a minute or two before. Gabriel ran his hands once more over Jack's hair, curled his fingers around the back of his head, and held him steady. He felt Jack readying for what was coming, loosening his jaw and pressing his tongue down flat, perfectly happy to let Gabriel begin rolling his hips forward to set the pace himself. Jack let Gabriel thrust into his mouth, making quiet, pleased noises. His cock quivered against the bloodless skin of his stomach, begging for attention, but his hands were occupied around the base of Gabriel's shaft and at his balls.

The pleasure mounted, growing nearer, sharper, until Gabriel moaned with the weight of it. He pulled free of Jack's mouth, holding him back despite an inarticulate groan of protest, and groped for the bottle of lube on the shelf.

“Here,” he said, pressing it into Jack's hands after squeezing out a measure onto his palm. “Better make it quick so you're not waiting on me to recharge.”

He stroked himself lightly, sucking in a sharp breath and drinking in the look of hunger plain on Jack's face as those eerie eyes opened one by one to stare at him. Jack barely glanced at the lube as he coated his fingers and reached around to prepare himself. He knelt there on the chill porcelain, breath hitching as he worked his fingers inside himself, stretching and thrusting, and the whole time, all of his eyes were focused intently on Gabriel.

For Gabriel's part, the naked desire in Jack's expression was the most potent of aphrodisiacs. Jack had been at his side since their time in the SEP. They'd trained together, suffered together, competed against each other, fought and bled together, and encouraged, shouted, and cursed each other through the bad times. They had argued and fought, but in the end, they had always supported each other. Gabriel couldn't imagine being without Jack now, without his gravelly laugh and his smile and his too-blue eyes, couldn't imagine never hearing his voice again, never feeling his touch, never having Jack there to vent to, to lean on. A piece of him had died along with Jack that horrible day, and it hadn't been made right until months later when they'd made their vows on Jack's first day out of med bay. He'd never wanted anyone the way he wanted Jack, and he knew all too well that it was a goddamn miracle that Jack was alive and at his side and looking at him as if Gabriel was his whole world, too.

Suddenly, as if he knew what Gabriel was thinking, Jack surged to his feet and pressed their lips together. Breaking the rules, but Gabriel didn't give a damn just then. When Jack's tongue swiped against his lips, he opened his mouth gladly, welcoming him in, savoring the heat and taste of him, the way Jack moaned into the kiss. Jack's cock pressed against his hand, and Gabriel took hold of it against his own, stroking them both together roughly.

“Ready for me Jackie?” The words came out slurred, caught in the kiss and barely intelligible. Gabriel pulled away, swallowing thickly.

“Been waiting on you,” Jack murmured. He wrapped his arms around Gabriel's neck and hugged him close, speaking quietly near his ear. “Had always been waiting for you.”

Jack seemed to know what Gabriel meant to do before it happened, because as Gabriel hefted him, he was already heaving himself up, wrapping his legs once more around Gabriel's waist. Jack kept up a steady stream of talk, low and rough, demands that sent heated waves of desire washing along Gabriel's nerves. Fuck me, _fuck_ me, Gabe, don't keep me waiting, don't make me wait any longer, Gabe, please, _fuck me_ , take me, make me _yours_ , want you, want you _so bad_ , want you inside me.

He didn't stop until Gabriel finally pressed inside of him, earning a loud, drawn-out moan. Jack clenched around him, nearly making Gabriel go weak in the knees, before he finally relaxed and shifted his hips, signaling that he was ready for more. Gabriel started slow, rolling his hips up, pushing deeper into Jack and appreciating the way he moaned, the way they fit together tight and slick and hot. Jack's thighs clenched around him as he bucked, trying to take Gabriel in deeper, faster. They faltered, lost the pace, crashed together clutching at each other, needy and chilled and shaking, and found their rhythm. In, in, out, and deeper; closer, closer, breathe, and come together. Gabriel rocked against Jack, crushing him against the wall, panting with the effort, with the thundering of his heartbeat and the rushing of his blood. Jack was moaning with every thrust, cursing and urging him on, fingers digging into Gabriel's back, claws sprouted and tearing holes in his coat. Gabriel surged forward and kissed him, throwing his last shreds of caution to the wind, wanting Jack and trusting him and needing him to know how deeply those feelings went. Jack kissed him back wholeheartedly, groaning into the kiss, and Gabriel swallowed the sound down, feeding the faint vibration of it to the molten heat growing within him.

The edge of orgasm shimmered along Gabriel's nerve endings, tantalizingly close. His hips snapped up, up, up, tearing sharp grunts from Jack's throat. He was close, so very close, losing the rhythm they'd built as he sped up, chasing the finish. Jack's knuckles sped up and down against his stomach as he stroked himself between them, faster and faster, keening as Gabriel thrust harder, deeper into him. So tight, so close...! Gabriel buried his face in the crook of Jack's neck, breath huffing over his skin, trading pleasure for pleasure, energy for life. His hips jerked up reflexively once more and once again, slamming into Jack and Gabriel bit down on his shoulder as climax shot through him, one wave after another, with Jack clenched tightly around him.

He sagged as he came down, letting out a shaky sigh as he lowered Jack to his feet and leaned against him, lightheaded and reluctant to break the contact between them. He left soft kisses all along the side of Jack's face, hands fumbling clumsily between them as he tried to help Jack stroke himself to his own climax. Jack finished with a quiet groan and chased Gabriel's mouth.

They kissed softly, sweetly after their hurried fuck. Gabriel was already starting to feel the draining effects. Sluggish and chilly, he pulled away sooner than he would have liked to get cleaned up. They moved without speaking in the tiny bathroom, trading casual touches as if each needed reassurance that the other was still there. Gabriel shed his ruined coat and stained pants on their way to the bed, and crawled naked beneath the sheets to sit against the headboard. Jack paused only long enough to grab a bottle of fortified water which he handed off to Gabriel before joining him under the covers. They made themselves comfortable, Jack tucked in at Gabriel's side, an arm around his shoulders. For several long minutes, as the last of the afterglow faded and Gabriel drained the water Jack had brought him, silence reigned. Jack was the one to break it.

“I saw your abuela.” The word rolled awkwardly off his tongue. “She was teaching you how to make flour tortillas. She fried them up on the stove. There was meat waiting, cheese, grilled vegetables.” He closed his eyes and breathed deeply through his nose, smiling faintly, looking at peace. “It smelled amazing.”

That was one of the side effects of feeding off of people the way Jack could—memories came along with it, the things that made a person who they were. More than Gabriel sharing stories about his life, Jack _experienced_ things the way Gabriel had. He took them in as if they were his own memories, even hearing and thinking in Spanish if that's what Gabriel had done, although it hadn't helped his pronunciation any.

There was no way to stop it from happening or to control what Jack saw, but they had rules for that, too. Privacy, first and foremost: an unspoken understanding. Jack didn't talk to anyone else about anything he learned this way. Gabriel trusted Jack implicitly about this. It went along with allowing Jack to take what he needed at times like these. Second was that Jack had agreed to tell Gabriel what memories he had gained. If Gabriel didn't want to talk about it, then it was never mentioned again. There was still an imbalance between them, however, which was why Jack had proposed the third rule. For every memory of Gabriel's that he took, he shared one of his own, something of equal weight, nothing held back. Easy enough, this time.

“Mom used to make blueberry muffins. There were blueberry bushes out back, and we'd go pick bowls of them. My favorites came after we'd visit my grandparents, though. They lived about an hour away, and it was the most boring trip you can imagine. I used to drive my parents half crazy asking how much longer, and talking non-stop about whatever popped into my head. But my grandparents had this mulberry bush in their yard, and they would always let me take some home. Mom would bake them in with the blueberries in the muffins, but they were just as good right off the branch. Sweetest damn things you've ever tasted.”

His voice had been growing quieter, and he curled a bit more snugly against Gabriel's side, head pillowed on his shoulder. It was unusual for him to be so subdued afterward, considering that he had essentially just finished recharging. Gabriel craned his neck, trying to get a better look at his face. Reaching up, he curled his fingers around the hand Jack had rested over his heart.

“All right, mi luna?”

“Better than all right,” he rumbled. He opened his sightless eyes and smirked, the same old confidence shining through. “Give me a minute and I'll be ready for another round.”

 


End file.
